Not MY “Mini Me”

I am days, hopefully still weeks away from giving birth to a little girl.

It has been an awfully odd journey for me, one I have taken incredibly serious. I cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea that I-ME-Jessica, am having a daughter.

Every mother that has a daughter promotes the same vision. The matching clothes, the matching shoes, the matching hairstyles and bows… the “this is my mini me” mentality.

I do not want that.

For me, it is a whole sense of distrust within that mindset… How can you rave over having a tiny little you, when you are not content with being you?

I could not imagine having a replica of me. In fact, I want the complete opposite of that, I want her to be everything I am not, everything I never was, and everything I never got to be.

I am constantly working on who I am as an individual, mother, sister, daughter, wife, and woman. I am never good enough, right enough, proper enough, I am nothing that I would want my own daughter to be.

Do not get me wrong, I am far from this melancholy, depressed, desolate sounding individual you may currently be picturing in your mind.

Truly, without doubt I am ecstatically happy within my life.

I. Am. Blessed.

However, striving to always be what I consider my personal level of perfect is ingrained in my psyche. Although I am bittersweetly content with that situation within myself (possibly more comfortable than anything else), I also would never wish that on my daughter.

I have continually fought with myself and the image that I would fight to portray as my identity to eventually connecting the dots to my own upbringing.

In as little words as possible (because discussion was never tolerated when coming from anyone other than the puppet master), it would best be described as: ‘always painting the outside to be perfect to the outside world while never really EVER acknowledging, reflecting, or working on what is on the inside- for that is, and always will be a sign of weakness’.

Now…… how could a daughter raised in a corrupted mind frame that could not only fabricate, but fathom that idea as a reality ever raise a daughter of her own?

I am not finished with myself yet. I am not done working out all of the neglect and abuse that was poured into the very foundation of me.. I do not yet know how to be a mother to a daughter. I do not yet know how to raise a daughter in this world simply because I do not yet know how to be a woman in it.

One thing is absolutely certain- I know who I do not want her to be.

Is that enough?